Wednesday, August 06, 2008

Flat Earth 2

As previously noted here, there's a small but vocal group of people who want to teach the controversy: the world is flat. And now, they've got computer renderings and FAQs. Apparently, the entire visible universe is rising at a steady rate of acceleration, and there is no gravity. For undisclosed reasons, large numbers of people are involved in an elaborate conspiracy, perhaps because "they're control freaks".

Ms Garwood says it is an "historic fallacy" that everyone from ancient times to the Dark Ages believed the earth to be flat, and were only disabused of this "mad idea" once Christopher Columbus successfully sailed to America without "falling off the edge of the world".
In fact, people have known since at least the 4th century BC that the earth is round, and the pseudo-scientific conviction that we actually live on a disc didn't emerge until Victorian times. Theories about the earth being flat really came to the fore in 19th Century England. With the rise and rise of scientific rationalism, which seemed to undermine Biblical authority, some Christian thinkers decided to launch an attack on established science.

(via Kottke)

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